The Food Babe and Rob Schneider: When companies choose poorly

It’s been a bad week for celebrity quacks; that is, after starting out looking as though it would be a good week. For example, as I discussed a couple of days ago, contender for the title of world’s most brain dead antivaccine conspiracy theorist, washed up comedian Rob Schneider, having somehow managed to land a gig resurrecting his 20 year old “Richmeister” character (a.k.a. the “Makin’ Copies Guy”) in the service of an ad campaign for State Farm Insurance, found his ad dropped like the proverbial Ebola-laced bedding when State Farm was made aware of Schneider’s virulently antivaccine views. It took a few days of social media pressure, but in the end, State Farm did the right thing. After all, from a strictly mercenary standpoint, does a company that sells, among other insurance products, health insurance want to be associated with a pitchman whose extreme antivaccine views are inimical to the business and message of any company selling health insurance? Then, of course, there’s the standpoint of society, and definitely using such a person without any consideration of the message he sends is not good for public health.

Then there’s Vani Hari, a.k.a., the “Food Babe.” I’ve written about the Food Babe several times before. Basically, she’s a one trick pony, with one modus operandi. In essence, in her utter ignorance of basic chemistry, she finds chemicals with scary-sounding names in foods and beverages. Once such chemicals are located, she uses their scary, scientific names to whip up a frenzy of outrage among her “Food Babe Army.” She then channels that ignorant outrage, directing it at food companies, in order to get them to remove that scary sounding chemical regardless of whether or not there is any science to suggest that the chemical is in any way harmful or dangerous. She’s done this so many times now that a term has been coined for it: Quackmail. It’s a perfect encapsulation of just how the Food Babe operates. She’s done it to Subway over what she ignorantly or disingenuously (or both) called the “yoga mat chemical” in its bread.
She’s done it to beer brewers over a number of scary sounding chemicals, in particular a hilariously dumb misunderstanding of chemistry that led her to confuse propylene glycol with propylene glycol alginate, even though the two chemicals are very different, and propylene glycol alginate is derived from kelp. She’s also pulled what I now like to call argumentum ad ickium (or an appeal to ickiness). Actually, I originally referred to it more as an appeal to “yuckiness,” but I just thought of argumentum ad ickium last night, and I like the term better. On the other hand, it does sound too much like David Icke; so maybe argumentum ad yuckium would still be a better term. Be that as it may, that’s basically what the Food Babe did when she demonized isinglass, which is basically gelatin derived from the swim bladder of a fish and a substance that has been used by beer brewers since the 19th century to accelerate the removal of yeast byproducts and other solids from the beer. But it’s icky (even though it’s not a urinary bladder, but rather a bladder that fills with air); so it scares the Food Babe, and she assumes it must be bad for you. It was for this latter incident that the term quackmail appears to have been coined. More recently, her success seemed to have stalled, with Starbucks being less than receptive to her quackmail with respect to its pumpkin spice latte.

Here we hear Hari’s story, in which she claims to have been sick all her life, culminating in a bout of appendicitis requiring appendectomy. After that, she claims to have cured herself of asthma and allergies and weaned herself from six to eight prescription drugs she had been taking in her 20s. To get an idea of just how bad and credulous this coverage is, get a load of this excerpt from EL’s interview with Hari:

Her chief expertise — from her days on the high school debate team and her corporate consulting career — lies in her ability to research, analyze, and fight for a cause. In this case, the cause is “food as a basic human right,” she says.

Of course, her ability to “research” is devoid of science or even minimal knowledge of chemistry and consists mainly of poring through lists of food ingredients to find scary chemical names, which she then Googles to cherry pick claims that can be used to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD), ignoring all the usually copious evidence that these chemicals and ingredients are safe, as well as the valid reasons there are for using them. Her skills at “analysis” consist of determining the best way to use these terms to whip up hysteria in her “Food Babe Army,” the better to aim their ignorant fury at whatever target she in her self-righteousness perceives to be endangering the health and well-being of America.

More accurate is a recent article about Hari by Duane Stanford entitled, Food Babe’s Ingredient Attacks Draw ‘Quackmail’ Backlash. In particular, she views herself as a scientist, but is utterly incapable of answering reasonable criticism or to think on her feet. I suppose this isn’t too surprising about a woman whose rule about food ingredients is, “When you look at the ingredients [in food], if you can’t spell it or pronounce it, you probably shouldn’t eat it,” which is painfully dumb. In any case, here’s what I mean:

After a friendly introduction and a clip of The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart spoofing Subway’s yoga mat bread, the public radio host says: “Now, you are not a scientist.”

“Well, I’m a computer scientist, so I had to take a lot of engineering courses for that,” says Hari, with an awkward laugh. He bores in. “But you are not a food scientist. You’re not a chemist. You’re not a scientist in that aspect.” Then he quotes an editorial, in which a Yale School of Medicine neurologist calls the Subway claims “the worst example of pseudo-scientific fear-mongering I have seen in a while.”

Hari’s feet fidget under the desk. When the host asks if she bullied Subway into action, her voice cracks.

“Actually, the only person that’s bullying anyone here is Subway, by telling us we’re eating fresh,” she says.

Hilarious. She thinks that being a computer scientist is the same thing as being a chemist. (It’s all science, right? Wrong.) No wonder there have been spawned so many pro-science parody versions of the Food Babe, including Chow Babe (my favorite), Science Babe, and the Food Hunk. Also, that Yale School of Medicine neurologist, in case you hadn’t already guessed, is Steve Novella. Unfortunately, we also learn just what we skeptics are up against:

FoodBabe.com attracts between 2.5 million and 4 million unique visitors a month, according to Hari. Comscore estimates Hari’s July web and mobile audience at 795,000 unique visitors in July. That compares to almost 14 million visits for Starbucks’ multiple web sites and mobile apps. Discrepancies aside — due to imperfect and complex measurement systems — Comscore’s data shows Hari’s monthly audience, dominated by women, has quadrupled in the past year with peaks and valleys along the way. It hit a peak in February and March, when she targeted Subway. New investigations predictably spike traffic.

The investigations drive readers to Hari’s Monthly Eating Guide, which she says is her primary source of revenue. For $17.99 a month, customers can download a full-color Food Babe Starter guide that teaches them about “organic living from the inside out.” The 38-page booklet lists “9 nasty ingredients to avoid,” tips on avoiding genetically modified organisms and advice on navigating restaurants.

Hari is just getting started. She has signed with a production company to create her own TV show and she’ll publish a book called “The Food Babe Way” in February detailing her journey and philosophy. Maintaining a business means the investigations have to keep coming. Inevitably, they will also have to get bolder. That means the retorts are sure to get louder and more hostile, too.

Rats. I predicted that Hari would be on TV soon, and unfortunately my prediction appears to have been correct.

In any case, not surprisingly, there was a backlash against EL when it featured Hari and her “Food Babe” empire as its cover story for the October issue. It’s understandable. For a magazine that claims to be about “no gimmicks” and “no hype,” featuring someone like the Food Babe, who is all about gimmicks and hype, on its cover seemed a bit out of sync with the magazine’s self-proclaimed image and mission, to say the least. I’ve never read EL before; so I have no idea whether it is prone to woo, but the reaction of its readers seems to argue that at least a significant minority of its readers are part of the reality-based community.

Now, I contrast the reaction of EL’s publishers to the criticism over their decision to feature Hari on their magazine’s cover with how State Farm reacted. After all, I once compared the Food Babe to antivaccine activist Jenny McCarthy, because they are about equally grounded in science, although these days the Food Babe seems better at self-promotion that Jenny McCarthy has been. Given that Rob Schneider seems to want to match or exceed Jenny McCarthy as a celebrity antivaccine activists spouting pseudoscience, comparing the Food Babe to Schneider seems appropriate, and comparing the reaction of EL to criticism also seems appropriate.

So, to recap, State Farm soaked in the criticism for a few days, and then it acted decisively. It dumped Rob Schneider’s commercial because it didn’t want to be associated with his dangerously antiscience message. EL, in contrast, went full mental jacket on its own readers:

Vani Hari – aka Food Babe – caused quite a riot on Facebook this week when Experience Life Magazine put her on the cover of its October issue. When faced with heavy criticism from readers about the magazine’s cover selection, Experience Life Magazine stated on Facebook that the comments are coming from “an industry-coordinated response — one designed to appear as though it is coming from individual consumers, but that is motivated and subsidized by a behind-the-scenes special interest.”

And, in case EL decides to delete it, here’s the full text preserved for posterity (such as it is) here at RI:

Over the weekend, we received an usually large influx of negative Facebook comments regarding our October cover subject, Vani Hari (a.k.a. The Food Babe). As a whole, these comments bear the earmarks of an industry-coordinated response — one designed to appear as though it is coming from individual consumers, but that is motivated and subsidized by a behind-the-scenes special interest. You can learn more about this phenomenon here: http://bit.ly/1rjdwNL.

In the meantime, we thank you for your patience and understanding.

Way to go full-on conspiracy mongering, EL! Of course, my only disappointment is that I haven’t been tarred by the anti-GMO Center for Food Safety as a food industry or pharma shill. I do so love demonstrating that I am no such thing. I do question, however, whether it’s a good idea to label your readers and other concerned citizens who complained as being somehow thralls of industry. It doesn’t strike me as a winning strategy to win friends and influence people unless the friends you want to win and the people you want to influence are conspiracy theorists and quacks. Indeed, a perusal of EL’s Facebook page indicates that many are still taking EL to task for accusing those who complained of being shills. No wonder it infuriated readers, who retorted with comments like, “This is the kind of response I would expect from ‘The Weekly World News.’ You are manufacturing a conspiracy because your chosen ‘expert’ doesn’t understand her topic of professed expertise. You can make this right by admitting a mistake or you can further indulge in this conspiratorial fantasy.” It’s getting so bad that marketing blogs like Tunheim are starting to take notice of EL’s reaction as a textbook example of how to create a social media crisis in response to criticism that will cause a long term problem for the magazine. That’s even leaving aside how EL has promoted quackery and pseudoscience by credulously featuring the Food Babe as its October cover story.

As Molly Gregas, PhD put it:

“Food Babe on the cover of a health and lifestyle magazine brings up two issues,” said Molly Gregas, Ph.D., in an online interview with Guardian Liberty Voice. Gregas is a research communication specialist and a freelance science literature editor in Toronto, Ontario. “First, the pseudoscience and misinformation that Food Babe preaches that is not grounded in fact or scientific knowledge; her material takes advantage of many people’s lack of scientific knowledge and preys on their fears.

“Second – and most important – is the more broad-based problem of information literacy,” Gregas emphasized. “We live in a time that is rich in sheer volume of information, but much of that information is of poor quality. The ability to evaluate sources of information and validate them or discard them based on critical thinking ability is a crucial skill for all citizens and consumers in today’s society. The Food Babe actively undermines information literacy by encouraging people to react emotionally based on inflammatory rhetoric and by avoiding follow-up questions and fact-checking against easily available primary sources. People want to be able to make good decisions for themselves and for their families, but one can’t make good decisions with bad information. Food Babe is a source of bad information, and by placing her on their cover, Experience Life has run up against the risk of alienating their readers.”

If there is any justice in the world, EL will pay a price for its decision to endorse the Food Babe’s pseudoscientific activism. Or it could always go full Alex Jones and go after that demographic. Let’s just put it this way. When you start to sound like antivaccine diva reporter Sharyl Attkisson after Rob Schneider’s ad was dropped by State Farm, you might want to rethink your PR strategy:

EL might find, however, that the appeal of New World Order conspiracy mongering and promotion of quackery is a bit more—shall we say?—limited than the appeal of straightforward health and fitness stories.

There’s one final issue, as well. As vile as I find EL’s use of the Food Babe on its cover to sell magazines and stir controversy, I do not question that EL has every right to do so. It’s free speech. So is my harsh criticism of the editors of EL for having made that choice. Similarly, State Farm had every right to choose to use Rob Schneider as a pitchman for its insurance, just as I and critics of Rob Schneider had every right to criticize State Farm for its decision. Cranks, however, frequently get the concept of free speech wrong.

Enter Rob Schneider again. Take it away, Rob:

"If the Freedom of Speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter,"
George Washington

No. Not quite. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences due to that speech. In the US, all it means is that the government can’t suppress what we say. It doesn’t mean that private companies have to allow cranks who represent them to say whatever they want. Nor are people exercising their freedom of speech to complain to companies who make bad mistakes in choosing their pitchmen or deciding whom to feature on the cover of their magazine “suppressing” the free speech of cranks, and labeling them as being shills is a painfully transparent ploy to poison the well, as I’ve described many times since I first coined the term “pharma shill gambit” nine years ago. It’s an obvious ad hominem attack designed to poison the well. In the end, unfortunately, cranks like the Food Babe, Rob Schneider, and apparently now the editors of EL like free speech, as long as it’s speech they agree with. Criticism, they don’t like so much.

226 Comments

Many people struggling against climate disinformation assume that the people they’re up against in the comments section are paid trolls, but I tend to disagree. What’s happened, I think, is that the PR disinformation campaign has brilliantly manipulated folks, mostly on the right, into believing their nonsense, and their troops do the work for free.

I think in general it’s a mistake to assume that one’s adversary is a shill, though in a few cases they obviously are. Sometimes op-ed pieces are written by people on the payroll of a PR organ — e.g., James Taylor’s amazingly bad op-ed pieces at Forbes. One also occasionally runs up against a denialist troll who is just oh-so-slick and might be a pro. But it’s pretty rare.

“Well, I’m a computer scientist, so I had to take a lot of engineering courses for that,” says Hari, with an awkward laugh.

Something I’ve noticed about global warming denialists is that many of them are engineers, and they exploit lay people’s confusion between scientists and engineers to advance their propaganda. Thus, for instance, a few years ago they were circulating a list of 700 “NASA scientists” who were opposed to global warming–almost all of them were engineers, and only one of them had anything even vaguely resembling a background in atmospheric science. Even as engineers, they are in Dunning-Kruger territory: there is a basic principle called “conservation of energy” which predicts that, if the Earth is absorbing more energy than it radiates (which is the expected consequence of adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere), the heat content of Earth should increase until it radiates as much as it absorbs.

So it is with the Food Babe. She’s exploiting her engineering background to make her argument appear to be from authority. And the Dunning-Kruger is strong in this one, too. Good on that public radio host for calling her out on it.

You know, this reminds me of a bit from the second Big Bang Theory episode this season, where Sheldon looks down on Howard because he’s an engineer, but Howard can answer most of the questions Sheldon put to him. Later Sheldon answers engineering questions, but is stumped by one.

The difference between the two is applied science versus more theoretical science. Engineers tend to use the findings of science as a tool to..well…engineer and make things. In other words, they look at scientific findings in terms of how they can be used to make things. Scientists tend to think in terms of the scientific findings more in terms of the scientific method, what is known, and what questions remain to be answered. In this, doctors tend to be more like engineers, using the sciences relevant to medicine to treat people.

One thing I’ve observed over the years is that engineers often seem more prone to Dunning-Kruger than scientists. I’m not sure why, but I’ve seen a lot of engineers try to claim the mantle of being a scientist and fail spectacularly. Ditto doctors, unfortunately, particularly with respect to evolution.

When you work in theoretical science you have to prove one HUNDRED times what you are doing for your work to be accepted. You are not “well it’s correlate” but more like “I need causality”.
Engineer don’t need to do that, either it work or not. They might think the science this way and be wrong (sitting on correlative effect).

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences due to that speech.

I don’t understand why this bit is so hard for people to get. Rob and Vani are perfectly free to say whatever stupidity they want without government interference, and we are free to call them out on their stupidity without government interference. It’s just that simple.

One of the reasons a company might choose badly- I’m especially thinking about Ms Hari- is that her message, however wrong, is trendy. We know that places that sell organic foods make money, putting labels that characterise a product as ‘healthy’ helps lead to healthy sales, ‘no additives’ also is an attention getter.

I recently read that about 2/3 of people who live in the US, UK and AUS are overweight. News reports bombard audiences with tales of childhood obesity, diabetes and hypertension: OBVIOUSLY woo-meisters stir up an alarming blend of the reality-based as reported and their own whimsical science about pollution, toxins and food produced in the lab, not on g-d’s green earth.

To a certain degree, the Food Babe is fashionable, a self-marketting phenomenon which appeals to a particular demographic so why wouldn’t a magazine enshrine her lovely visage on its cover?-btw- I’ve never heard of EL before. Oh right, why would I look to a ‘hype-free’ outlet when I search for hype-spouting alties!

At any rate, Orac is SO correct ( and what else is he ever?) when he mentions that the alties forever label SBM advocates as money hungry, when in truth, that epithet is best reserved solely for them- I think that I can explain that well- as you know ( well, you should anyway) that USUALLY adolescents learn how to understand people who have different values and ideas from their own HOWEVER our most esteemed woo-meisters cannot seem to understand that because they are moitvated by the bottom line and celebrity not everyone else by necessity feels the same- thus they see shills everywhere.

Heh.
Chemical names scare them BUT they absolutely adore labels like resveratrol, proanthocyanadins, isoflavons, quercitin et al probably because they show how* vegetable-y* and *natural* they are.
Ascorbic acid sounds so *Lab-ish*.Maybe call it *Sunlight drops* – or is that vitamin D?

I still have trouble believing that such unadulterated woo is still taken seriously by so many people, but – sadly – it is. However, thanks to orac, I have now been thoroughly versed in those verbal cues that allowed me to give these people a wide berth. Not so easy when you’ve been treated for breast cancer; though. If one more person tells me that I should drink oatgrass to kill any residual cancer cells, I’ll go postal. I absolutely refuse to drink something my cat used to woof up hairballs, I don’t care how natural it is!

It’s a funny(tragic?) coincidence that you’d compare EL turning into Alex Jones-level of conspiracy mongering in defending Vani Hari, when she has already multiple interviews with him on his show. Fearmongering is probably the cheapest, most effective tactic known to generate a response. It’s such a shame.

Have any of you noticed the tendency of anti-immunization types to ramble on and on, and on, like, fuh-ev-ahh? Read some of the stuff on AoA, and it’s completely logorrheal–and they *all* do it. Look at Sheryl Attkinson’s tweets about the “whistleblower” nonsense, and you can see that she can barely contain herself, like she’s interrupting a conversation with herself. I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’…

Vaccines, This story tells me the same rhetoric and methods and how the truth will out.

EPA knew pesticides were killing honeybees in the 1970s but punished those who spoke out

For decades, top officials at the Environmental Protection Agency (PEA) were aware that a compound approved for agricultural use in the United States was wiping out the honeybee population, but they chose to ignore the compound’s effects in deference to pressure from agri-giant corporations.

Worse, the agency reacted harshly to anyone within the EPA who attempted to bring the issue to light, including through firings, forced reassignments and other actions.

According to a scholarly 2014 study [PDF] compiled by researcher Rosemary Mason, “on behalf of a global network of independent scientists, beekeepers and environmentalists,” and published on the website of MIT, “We have found historical and chronological evidence to show that the herbicide glyphosate (or other herbicides that are used as alternatives) is responsible for the transformation of garden escapes into super-weeds (in the UK these are termed ‘invasive species’).”

Sep 7, 2014 … The triple MMR jab was banned in Japan in 1993 after 1.8 million … the MMR vaccine seven years ago – virtually the only developed nation to turn its …… up to nearly-nude male dancer to open her European tour with sauciest …

Right, it is the written equivalent of *pressured speech* which is a symptom of psychopathology wherein the speaker continues frantically at a feverish pace, without stopping for what seems like _fuh -ev -ah_…
ACTUALLY if you ever tune in to PRN you might catch a listen to this phenomenon in the wild as the manic, grandiose founder and host launches into another sputtering, breathless rant.
It is the spoken equivalent of a Mike Adams post and USUALLY heaps derision upon the government, corporations and the media as well.

– btw- while I’m here…
sadasd, about that ‘nym ( and sadmar, too) , you’re more than just SAD, you have other qualities including your name, nickname, abiliities, peculiarities, ability to snark.
So why not? Just a thought, please don’t take it wrong.

Pricewise, it’s … um … a good bit more expensive than Milwakee’s Best and a good bit less than Founders.

As for Food Babe; The microbrewers did get a bad wrap. Rarely, are fish bladders used to floccate and clarify these days (too pricey) and they’re not usually left floating around in the bottled/casked product in any case. The ‘propylene glycol’ is not *supposed* to be in beer and usually only is when the cooling jacket has corroded/ruptured into it. Usually. I *think* there are a few incidents of it being intentionally added.

According to all the engineers around here, and as near as I can tell from their description description of the dielectric, *isenglass* is nothing more than good ol’ mica. Which weighs more than fish bladders. So, it sinks. And, you can also build a bridge out of it. A shiny one. With dichromic properties, and stuff.

According to an infectious disease surveillance (2000), total measles cases were estimated to be from 180,000 to 210,000, and total deaths were estimated to be 88 [11,12]. Measles cases are most frequently observed among non-immunized children, particularly between 12 to 24 months.

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences due to that speech. In the US, all it means is that the government can’t suppress what we say. It doesn’t mean that private companies have to allow cranks who represent them to say whatever they want. Nor are people exercising their freedom of speech to complain to companies who make bad mistakes in choosing their pitchmen or deciding whom to feature on the cover of their magazine “suppressing” the free speech of cranks, and labeling them as being shills is a painfully transparent ploy to poison the well, as I’ve described many times since I first coined the term “pharma shill gambit” nine years ago. It’s an obvious ad hominem attack designed to poison the well. In the end, unfortunately, cranks like the Food Babe, Rob Schneider, and apparently now the editors of EL like free speech, as long as it’s speech they agree with. Criticism, they don’t like so much.

Just to be crystal clear about it:

I totally agree with every word of the above.

But one of those examples is not like the other. The Rob Schneider spot didn’t promote or endorse anti-vax views. It promoted State Farm and endorsed the Richmeister character.

To me, that’s a significant difference. I mean, inoffensive things done by people who also hold offensive views aren’t traditionally regarded as a proper object of criticism.

@Denise Walter: Truthfully, I just randomly punched in a username when I started commenting here, but on further reflection, it seemed oddly apropos, so I stuck with it. And admittedly, it’s a bit chickenshit to throw bombs at parents of children with developmental disabilities semi-anonymously. A feller’s got to blow off some steam now and again.

Of course, parents of children with autism aren’t to blame for their child’s disorder. Of course; of course. That would be awful.

But maybe…maybe people who are totally f’ed in the head to start out with tend to have kids that end up having problems. I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’.

Ann: The Rob Schneider spot didn’t promote or endorse anti-vax views. It promoted State Farm and endorsed the Richmeister character.

Here’s the thing though: It wasn’t and isn’t clear that State Farm was unaware of Rob Schneider’s views until the net exploded on them. To anyone in California, or who IS aware of Schneider’s views, the hiring looks fishy. To the point that people might start thinking: Oh, State Farm is anti-vax or that this was a sneaky way of announcing that their insurance no longer covers vaccines.

AND I don’t think that it’s wrong or chickensh!tish to write anonymously- it’s SMART because more than a few vaccine/ SBM supporters I can name ( from RI and other places) have been “given a hard time” in RL because of their views.

I chose to use my own name but leave off my second last name- HOWEVER there’s a woman with exactly that ( spelled the same) as her name/’nym from Tasmania so I hope no anti-vax loon/ hiv- aids denialist has bothered her because of me.

If I had to do it over, I’d probably use one or the other last name as they are both masculine first names- i.e Walter or ‘Howard’- alone. Or DW, DWH or suchlike.

Blue Moon is Coors, Coors is now MillerCoors. One of the larger competitors left against InBev. I think BM is pretty bad compared to good representations of the style. If you like Blue Moon try Allagash White. You should like it as it is the same style and it is much better. Founders rocks. I am going to have a Devil Dancer (triple ipa) either tonight if I can manage to stay awake or tomorrow. Founders is one of the best craft brewers out there.

While I haven’t been overly impressed with the Founders entries I’ve tried, I’m curious whether anyone has sampled the “All Day IPA.” As I’ve mentioned before, 4.7% ABV strikes me as a bit much for the name (with Honkers at 4.2% and the unusual Bell’s Oarsman at 4.0%), but the local grocery store has 15-packs at $17.

Am I seriously the only one who thinks of “Surrey with the Fringe on Top” anytime I hear the word isenglass?

No. When I read or hear it, that old earwig starts up:

With isinglas curtains that roll right down
In case there’s a change in the weatherrrrrrrr.
Two bright sidelights winkin’ and blinkin’
Ain’t no finer rig, I’m athinking
You can keep yer rig if yer thinkin’ that I’d keer to swap…

Ann: The thing is, if a company contracts with a celebrity, they get the *whole* celebrity, not just bits. If a company manages to snag Mel Gibson, they own his anti-semitism as well. They get Kelsey Grammer, they have to deal with his political leanings.
If someone has been acting dumb on the internet, like Schneider, the company owns that stupidity, whether or not the deed was done before the contract happens.

Denice: “sadmar” has no meaning. It was generated from my usual screen name (which does mean something, though it’s an inside joke) via a simple coding algorithm. It specifically has nothing to do with my history of depression. But I do appreciate your concern. Thanks!

MI Dawn: Yup, as soon as I saw the word, my brain sang “with isenglass curtains that roll right down, in case there’s a change in the wea-ther!” But I am old…
Tim: The question of what actual surrey’s had is complicated. Oklahoma! was not written with historical or geographic accuracy in mind.

palidrom: “Sometimes op-ed pieces are written by people on the payroll of a PR organ.”
Way more than sometimes, though not so much in major newspapers/magazines. Business publications probably go there on a regular basis, but are probably pretty up-front about it. I don’t read them, so I don’t really know.

It’s the smaller, more local publications where the PR ‘pseudo-news’ releases really score. These operate with the smallest ‘content’ staff they can get away with, and will pretty much publish ANYTHING that appears non-controversial, is written in grammatically correct English, and is FREE.

Orac: I looked at the Center For Food Safety .pdf, and though you may disagree with their agenda, their take on PR looks on the up-and-up to me. Pretty much every big corporation has critics of some kind, and uses similar tactics to counter them. Which is true regardless of who’s the ‘good guy’ and who’s the ‘bad guy.’

Basically, there are enough real, identifiable, unambiguous ‘front groups’ for the manufactured food industry, it would be stupid for the Center For Food Safety to muck up their argument by getting all paranoid Alex Jones/Glen Beck and pointing fingers at people who aren’t actually shills and can, you know, show evidence of that.

In fact, if I was with the Center For Food Safety, I would be righteously pissed as Ms. Experience Life for linking ‘us’ to a nutso defensive rant. In short, flooding comments threads is NOT how these ‘front groups’ work. The Pharma Shill Gambit (TM) here belongs just to Experience Life and Food Babe, and shows just how illegitimate and bankrupt of intelligence they are.

It doesn’t strike me as a winning strategy to win friends and influence people unless the friends you want to win and the people you want to influence are conspiracy theorists and quacks.

Ah, but Vainy Harhar is making a pretty penny, isn’t she? I just checked the EL archives on their website. The mag’s been around for over ten years, and seems to have been on the woo train from the get-go. “Detox” is a major heading on the subject banner. Under “Heal” you got your “Functional Medicine” your “Ayurveda” your “Accupressure” your “Qigong” and… wait for it:

“Integrative Oncology: A Healthier Way to Fight Cancer”

No immunization scare-mongering, but did you know Autism can be cured by a gluten-and-preservative-free paleo-diet!

Perhaps this is why Ms. Experience thinks she’s been Astroturfed. The commenters complaining about Harhar may not be her regular readers, and the spark was Vainy appearing on the cover. She’s less nutty than a lot of stuff they publish regularly. But on a quick scan of the earlier covers you’d be hard-pressed to distinguish EL from any other ‘lifestyle’ magazine. The most typical covers show someone doing something athletic, and blurb fitness-related stories inside.

I have the impression there’s a certain overlap between ‘fitness’ enthusiasts and ‘natural food’ types, and that’s the core readership, but they probably get readers who are mainly into exercise or mainly into woo and just ignore the other stuff normally. (A pretty common approach for magazines and their wider readership.) So maybe the comments come from non-wooian readers who are there for the fitness stuff and got pushed past their tipping point by the Food Babe cover. (???)

It’s seems the generally-moderate woo isn’t there as a calculated marketing device, but because the editors/publishers are true believers. So it makes sense that their response to the complaints didn’t make sense. But I’d guess when the dust settles, EL will go back to the ol’ jock on the cover, woo in the back pages mode, as I’ll guess that folks at more than one agency that buys ad space in EL read the Tunheim blog and have expressed their, uhh, concern.

Just like Rob Schneider, it’s always the money that matters the most. If you want to change the media, scare the sponsors.

And BTW, I vote for argumentum ad ickium which has won my Interwebz for the day!

A similar situation occurred in Ottawa a couple of years ago, when Jenny McCarthy was contracted to lead a fitness fundraiser for the local Cancer Foundation. There was an immediate shztstorm and, after a few awkward excuses from the organizers, the appearance was cancelled. I was involved in the protest. On the other hand, I did nothing when it was announced that she would be one of the cast members of The View.

Why the difference? It’s because McCarthy’s activism was a direct threat to the health of people undergoing treatment of cancer, as well as working against cancer prevention (HPV and Hepatitis B vaccines). Her appearances on The View would not have directly threatened the health of vulnerable people. I support State Farm’s action, since they have an interest in promoting health. Schneider’s activism directly opposes this. If Schneider was appearing in an ad for beer or copiers or whatever, I wouldn’t give a damn, apart from my usual disdain for this tool.

Ugh. Why do engineers (at least the ones that I tend to see on the net) think they are scientists? Maybe I’m inoculated to this by having worked for an actual prof and because of that know better then to claim proficiency (although it was fun to see the test output of the program I helped write being used to see if undergrads could figure out that it was nonsense).

He was playing a character that’s entirely unrelated to his anti-vax advocacy, which is how he earns a living.

One could also say that he was playing a character that is intimately tied to his identity, which includes being a public figure who invests so little thought in his public antivaccine presence that he’s willing to utter remarks such as “it’s against the Nuremberg Laws.”

Marc Bolan (T Rex) had a real thing about cars:
– Well you’re built like a car, you got a hubcap diamondstar halo
– Babe I’m just a Jeepster for your love.
– Just like a car, you’re pleasing to behold. I’d call you Jaguar, if I may be so bold.

Ironically, Bolan never learned to drive, and he died in an MVA when his girlfriend, who was driving, lost control and hit a tree.

All Day IPA is on the boundary of a session beer. Session is generally thought to stay 4.5% or below. The All Day is very good (according to Beer Advocate) and the BA. However, I trend to the high alcohol content brews (and drink many fewer). Founders is recognized for several of its offerings, perhaps none more so than the Breakfast Stout (rated as high as you can get by the Beer Advocate readers and the Bros). It is a wonderful Imperial Stout coming in at about 8% and having a nice balance of dark chocolate and dark roast coffee. The Kentucky Breakfast Stout version is about 11% and aged in bourbon barrels. I slightly prefer the original. There is another Imperial Stout they make called “Imperial Stout” and it is about 10% and a much smoother variety of the warming alcohol in the IS than in the KBS. I am more of an IPA guy and there are some better versions than the standard All Day made with different varieties of hops. The standard IPA, Centennial is very nice and world class (as noted above). Then the Double IPA is Double Trouble which is very good but the Centennial sort of tops their line of IPAs. The Founders brewers are fantastic and if you like Scotch Ales (and not that many people do) they make a Wee Heavy that is very nice, Dirty [email protected]$tard.

Nyro’s version appeared on the brilliant Eli and the Thirteenth Confession in 1968. Her songwriting actually tended to lead to hits for other bands, in this case, The Fifth Dimension (who also scored with “Wedding Bell Blues”; Three Dog Night also got “And When I Die,” Streisand “Stoney End,” etc.).

I actually had reason to think about T. Rex this afternoon, when I was in a store that was playing “Get It On.” It’s been a long time since I’ve had a copy of Electric Warrior, but I took a mental note of “inoffensive.” (By contrast, the next item was “Crazy Train,” which I noted as “insipid.”)

One could also say that he was playing a character that is intimately tied to his identity,

If what one meant by it was that he was known for playing that character on SNL, I think one would be better off saying that.

Yet you’re comfortable with asserting in nearly the next breath that “Jenny McCarthy is famous exclusively for being Jenny McCarthy”? Isn’t she also a newspaper columnist and a TV personality and an author?

I agree that he’s also publicly and actively anti-vax and don’t doubt that he’s said many stupid things in connection with it.

Hey! You know what?

One could also say that since something was sometimes a neurotoxin, no iteration of it should be in vaccines.

And it would be the exact same argument you’re making.

Only if what I said were utterly stripped of social context, which would again be an instance of trying to box off content for the sake of analogy.

Marc Bolan died in 1977. DiamondStar Motors was formed in 1985. The name refers to the logos of Mitsubishi and Chrysler respectively.

A lot of people have wondered what “hubcap diamondstar halo” means. Broadly, the lyric is taken as an example of car:sex metaphor that predates rock and roll, but is usually associated with Chuck Berry, to whom Bolan alludes: “Meanwhile, I was still thinkin'” But few are the attempts to decode the specific meaning — e.g. what does a hubcap diamondstar halo have to do with Getting It On? The most interesting interpretation I found:

The line “You’ve got a hubcap diamond star halo” used to baffle me… until I was walking through an art museum one day. In the collection of Renaissance art I saw painting after painting with the Virgin Mary as the subject, and without fail she was depicted with an elaborate, well engineered, glimmering halo… in fact they looked like hubcaps, adorned with diamond stars. Too much of a coincidence to my mind. In the song Bolan is describing a young woman who has both the air of innocence and flat out sexuality. So the allusion to the greatest virgin of them all is altogether fitting in the context of this song. .Al – Baltimore, Md

None. No roles. That role is what he’s known for, by those who know him..

He’s also a very public anti-vax advocate, for an anti-vax advocate, by which I mean.

He’s known for playing that role. Most people don;t follow vaccine politics closely enough to know he’s involved in them.

I don’t see why his sad little reprise of the character who’s his sad little claim to what fame he has on a State Farm commercial would be likely to alter that. Or how some kind of anti-vax taint would be transferred to the company through it.

Because it’s wholly unrelated to all things anti-vax, except that when not appearing in State Farm spots, the person playing the role is an activist for them. Those are his beliefs. They have no bearing on his work in sketch comedy.

Jenny McCarthy holds similar beliefs, which do have some bearing on her work as a TV personality, author and newspaper columnist because in all three cases, that work consists of expressing her beliefs.

Only if what I said were utterly stripped of social context, which would again be an instance of trying to box off content for the sake of analogy.

What part of the social context makes Rob Schneider’s performance as the Richmeister an equivalent threat to the common good as Rob Schneider’s anti-vax advocacy, other than that people transfer their feelings from the latter to the former without regard to whether they have the same impact?

Narad:
I don’t get why anyone is trying to parse the difference between ‘actor’ and ‘celebrity’, or claiming it’s OK to hire a celebrity bozo for “their proper job” or if that job doesn’t have the COI of health insurance/anti-immunity. There’s contentless celebrity — famous for being famous, e.g. Paris Hilton — and earned celebrity — e.g. Mel Gibson. ‘Celebrity Journalism’ ala People doesn’t distinguish, and ANY exposure famous people get gives them a bigger megaphone to fill the ether with whatever BS is in their mind. It’s less that if a company contracts with a celebrity, they get the *whole* celebrity, (which is true), and more if a company contracts with a celebrity for any sort of public presentation, they amplify the celebrity. Which in the case of Schneider is flatly immoral.
………………….

NARAD: One could also say that he was playing a character that is intimately tied to his identity,
ANN: One could also say that since something was sometimes a neurotoxin, no iteration of it should be in vaccines. And it would be the exact same argument you’re making.
NARAD: Only if what I said were utterly stripped of social context…

Narad, IMHO your reply is too kind. It’s not “the same argument” in any way at all. Ann’s claim there may be the most spectacular analogy fail I’ve ever seen. SMH.
…………………………….

“Which other roles in Rob Schneider’s portfolio spring to mind when you think of him as actor qua actor?”Judge Dredd

ROB: Hallelujah, brother!
PSYCHO VILLAIN: Wait a minute. Can it be? Can it be that from the city of the fallen we have one of the faithful?
ROB: Amen, brother! Praise the Lord! I’m a believer!
SLY: Fergee, don’t do it.
ROB: Go tell it on the mountain!
SLY: You’re making a big mistake.
ROB: Well, Dredd, maybe the law doesn’t make mistakes, but I’m free – and you’re toast.
SLY: Actually, YOU’RE toast. I forgot to mention it. Your new friends… they’re cannibals.

Rob Schneider, you have been Judged!

P.S. I always thought Laura Nyro’s versions of her own songs we’re better the hit versions by others. Way under-rated as an artist, IMHO.

Schneider also has a role in Shelby: The Dog Who Saved Christmas a low-budget comedy starring Chevy Chase and Tom Arnold, being produced in Canada with UK funding, for direct-to-DVD release this coming December. Rob will be playing the dog. (i.e. it’s voiceover work)

After learning that “Autism Rates Rocket – 1 in 38 British Boys – Cambridge Study” we now find Dr. Max Wiznitzer, a key vaccine proponent admitted on Friday night’s US TV programme Larry King Live that the rate of autism in northeastern Ohio, the largest Amish community in the USA with low rates of vaccination, was 1 in 10,000. He should know, he said: “I’m their neurologist.”

He was playing a character that’s entirely unrelated to his anti-vax advocacy, which is how he earns a living. An honest living, afaik. And if anyone can explain to me either:

(a) how State Farm was associating itself with more than that; or

(b) how associating itself with the character constituted a bad choice in a public-health-pertinent context

I’d be much obliged to them.

I don’t know if I can but I’ll give it a whirl. Yes a character was portrayed but the actor playing that character cannot be separated from the actor’s very vocal and visible anti-vaccine “activism”. Since State Farm sells health insurance and is an avid supporter of Immunisation Awareness it is truly a bad choice. They should have done their homework and avoided this all together. Which leads to if they had, would that be any better? That is passing Schneider over because his activities do not mesh with State Farm’s services?

A,
Don’t you bother checking any of the misinformation you keep dumping here for no apparent reason? You’re doing a great job of exposing antivaccine proponents as deliberate liars.

After learning that “Autism Rates Rocket – 1 in 38 British Boys – Cambridge Study” we now find Dr. Max Wiznitzer, a key vaccine proponent admitted on Friday night’s US TV programme Larry King Live that the rate of autism in northeastern Ohio, the largest Amish community in the USA with low rates of vaccination, was 1 in 10,000. He should know, he said: “I’m their neurologist.”

WIZNITZER: Years ago, I thought about this idea among the Amish population here in northeast Ohio, to whom I am actually the neurologist. And I went to the public health nurses and said, tell me about their vaccination rates. And I was told that there is a very high rate of vaccination amongst the Amish population. Out of ten thousand of individuals in our population, we have one child with autism. I see all these children.

The commercials with the Aflac duck never said “Hey, general public! The guy who does the voice of this duck is Gilbert Gottfried!” And as far as I know, when Gilbert Gottfried made jokes on Twitter that made fun of thousands of deaths experienced in a natural disaster, it did not result in any sort of organized campaign “Hey, Aflac! Dump this voice actor because of jokes that had nothing to do with the Aflac duck!”

But Aflac still showed Gottfried the door. It *could have* been the result of some executive, or some executive’s spouse, saying “I don’t care if the controversy is *good* for our bottom line, someone who says such terrible things should be punished!!”

But it’s more likely that the decision-makers at Aflac said “people WILL associate what Gottfried does for our company with the objectionable things he’s chosen to do in his own time – and we don’t want that association. It doesn’t matter how many reasonable-sounding arguments you can make about why people *shouldn’t* make that assocation, or why, if they make it, they should overlook it – we believe they WILL. If we didn’t believe that people are influenced in their buying decisions by factors that don’t have any *logical* relevance, then we wouldn’t bother making commercials with a CGI duck to begin with.”

I think State Farm knew about Rob Schneider’s antivax views, but didn’t realize that they were so widely-known (or more accurately, that a smallish contingent who knew about those views and cared *deeply* would make them known so widely.) Once they realized that, it wouldn’t have mattered if the skeptics had said “No, no, we WANT Rob Schneider to keep this job! We want his ads to stay on the air! We loathe his antivax views, but we don’t feel he should experience any economic consequences for them!” State Farm would still have said “we pay for these expensive ads to steer the conversation in the direction WE want. If they aren’t achieving that, then we stop paying. Period.”

If you feel that it was wrong for skeptics to *hope* for Schneider’s ads to be pulled, or to be *glad* once they were, that’s your right to feel that way. I don’t necessarily agree; I am also not sure I totally disagree.

But the only thing skeptics can be faulted for DOING is not suppressing THEIR VIEWS, in order to make sure Schneider didn’t experience any consequences from HIS. I’m sure the problems with that are obvious.

Remember our late hippie icons, Marc and Laura, lived and wrote in a time of social upheaval and artistic experimentation which led to perceptive as well as odd references in their lyrics. Sure, I could imagine a guy in this era observing renaissance art in a museum and then using something he saw as an image in a song.

But then again, I find the verse to play with rhythm as well as imagery- people who write sometimes choose sounds and rhythms over precision in meaning. Hubcap diamondstar halo is * da-da da-da-da DA-da* which is pretty cool in of itself. I kind of like just how it sounds.
As I admire: “Listen to the wailing, of the rain on the river” etc (Nyro)

At any rate, both of them were creative in other ways such as how they chose stage names and how they dressed and wore their hair. Both were also half-Jewish in the once predominantly Christian cultures of London and NYC and used their outsider staus to accentuate their creative differences- being an outsider was cherished by our older hippie brothers and sisters (‘Bolan’ is a contraction of Bob Dylan, I’m told); Nyro ( i.e. Nero/ de Niro means black in Italian) emulated soul singers.

Writers of that era might reference Mediaeval courtiers and space aliens – occasionally on the same album- without missing a beat, so why not Madonnas and Jag-u-ars?

I don’t believe that in all my life I have ever bore witness to such an concise and exemplary review of beer, sir. You probably should weep for the rest of the species, though…

Anyways, I’ve been having a bit of trouble with my Red’s Rye the past couple times I’ve had it {I know, you’re not *supposed* to drink the whole six of that in one sitting and out of the bottle but people do…} — There seems this kind of ‘sticky’, too sugary feel around the lips. Like some of the imitations. Did it change? Or, did I change??

Thank you and rather than weeping I enjoy pulling people into my circle of beer lovers. I have a love/hate thing going with Rye in beer. The red’s Rye is, good but I think it always has had a bit too sugary of a mouthfeel. Like its sticking on your teeth. Not sure they changed the formula but they did change the name as it used to be Rye PA rather than the Rye IPA it goes by now. There is sometimes a great deal of variability given how old the beer is and, living in MA, I have had less than fresh batches from Founders. Reinforces looking for the born on or drink by dates.

One of my favorite movies is probably Bottle Shock (sorry, beer shills). But only because there was a lack of cannabis and easy access to real local beer shills back then (or now, where I am until late 2011)…

Michele Simon (the report author) joined the discussion. She said that her report did not support this situation. And she even commented on the Facebook post and wrote to the editor. Apparently she’s written for them before and has cred with them.

I rarely agree with Simon, but I was glad to see we pretty much agree on the babe.

Thanks for the link on isinglass. When I grew up a few miles from Claremore, nobody mentioned that as an anachronism, but it does seem the term came along a few years after the time period of the show. I’ll give Oscar Hammerstein II the benefit of poetic license on that one.

Many years ago when I visited the Alabaster Caverns in northwestern Oklahoma, they mentioned the isinglass curtains. I think they said it was a form of alabaster, but mica is a different mineral.

BTW, I liked the British revival production with Hugh Jackman and they used an electric vehicle for the “surrey” which was historically possible because Baker electric cars were being built at the time.

@narad, I also really liked Laura Nyro’s singing. I think I still have my LP of that record.

And on the celebrity anti-vax theme, Jim Carrey has been mentioned many times in this blog and I don’t remember any calls to ban him from performing as an actor.

When a company hires a celebrity for an ad, they’re paying for a positive image that helps promote their product. Look at the ads that Tiger Woods lost a few years ago. So, I think State Farm acted appropriately.

So, Ann
I’m gonna swing wide and guess that you pride yourself of your rationality and reason. That’s how the world should be, right? Well, I’m in advertising and branding, and I hate to break it to you, but the world is a vast, interconnected, junior high school lunchroom. I try to teach my clients this all the time. Don’t use Twitter. Don’t use Facebook. Let us do that for you unless you’re very, very skilled. We also emphasize the point that the first amendment is great but everyone else has it too and you’re not free from the consequences of your speech. Like it or not, David Brin’s transparent society from the novel Earth is coming true with a vengeance. I could never run for political office because IRL I’m a very vocal atheist, skeptic, queer and hold non-traditional views on many subjects. I accept that I will never be able to run for office. I have been “investigated” by potential clients and told that I was incompatible with their views. I don’t want to work for them anyway. Wake up, Ann. It’s a new era of transparency. People can know everything about you and you have no power over how they will react. Accept that we are an irrational, emotional species and plan accordingly. That’s being rational and reasonable.

“One thing I’ve observed over the years is that engineers often seem more prone to Dunning-Kruger than scientists.”

Rather than “engineers are more susceptible than scientists”, isn’t a simpler hypothesis for the amount of crank engineers just that there are a shitton more engineers than scientists? You need a basic amount of knowledge to get the Dunning-Kruger started, and for the most part, a science education means an engineering degree.

Jenny McCarthy holds similar beliefs, which do have some bearing on her work as a TV personality, author and newspaper columnist because in all three cases, that work consists of expressing her beliefs.

Was she talking about them on “The View”? I’ve never seen anything about them in her Sun-Times column. I don’t think this McCarthy carve-out works.

Only if what I said were utterly stripped of social context, which would again be an instance of trying to box off content for the sake of analogy.

What part of the social context makes Rob Schneider’s performance as the Richmeister an equivalent threat to the common good as Rob Schneider’s anti-vax advocacy, other than that people transfer their feelings from the latter to the former without regard to whether they have the same impact?

Sorry. I hadn’t seen it. And I’m not sure I understand it. But I’ll deal with that over on the other thread.

Anyway, it is not “what part of the social context,” it’s the fact that there is one. This is the analogy that you tried to draw here, and what I was responding to:

I think I might be missing something obvious. Because I definitely don’t understand that. And at a higher level of non-understanding than I can easily account for. Approaching “complete incomprehension,” in fact. So I’m not really sure how to ask for elucidation. But fwiw:

As I understand it, we were talking about this:

One could also say that he was playing a character that is intimately tied to his identity, which includes being a public figure who invests so little thought in his public antivaccine presence that he’s willing to utter remarks such as “it’s against the Nuremberg Laws.”

And what you appear to me to be saying there is that his identity somehow has fixed, universal properties that are always present and always operating in the same way, irrespective of circumstance, simply because that’s Rob Schneider’s identity: What it is and does.

That he’s existentially, cosmically an anti-vax agent and therefore doesn’t actually have to be saying or doing anything harmful or offensive for harm or offense to occur. Basically.

I’d say that was the same as saying that mercury is always a neurotoxin because it’s sometimes a neurotoxin.
.
So. By what mechanism of action do the parts of Rob Schneider’s identity that aren’t in the State Farm commercial reach the people who see it?

Jenny McCarthy holds similar beliefs, which do have some bearing on her work as a TV personality, author and newspaper columnist because in all three cases, that work consists of expressing her beliefs.

Was she talking about them on “The View”? I’ve never seen anything about them in her Sun-Times column. I don’t think this McCarthy carve-out works.

We have a denoting-phrase-based confusion.

Jenny McCarthy makes her living by expressing her beliefs and opinions on a range of topics from an assortment of media platforms. There’s nothing to judge her work by other than that. And there’s plenty of reason to think that she can’t be counted on not to say stupid and dangerous things of an anti-vax nature when she’s operating without oversight, such as that provided by newspaper editors or TV producers.

Or — if she did sketch comedy — a script. But she doesn’t do sketch comedy. She gets hired to say what she thinks. There’s a reason to think that’s potentially problematic. And there’s therefore a reason to object that doesn’t apply to Schneider/State Farm.

Ann,
You’re inability to grasp this point has everything to do with what I wrote. Schneider’s made his brand toxic by taking a crazy stance in public. He’s paying the price for that by not getting hired or by being fired. Mel Gibson and Don Sterling have paid the same price for different stances. It’s all public perception at the level of advertising and promotion. You don’t hire people with extreme beliefs to sell or represent products. What’s not to get?

Children are being sickened and dying because of the delusional thinking of crazy people, and it’s only going to stop if there are social and economic consequences for those that promote it as a way of growing their own personal brand. When the wealthy benefactors of this public nuisance have more to lose than gain from their behavior, it will stop.

Makin’ copies guy-fair game. Holly Robinson Peete (whoever the f she is), sorry, can’t do our morning show because the sponsors called and said they’d drop their ad buy. JB, the investors don’t like your shenanigans off hours. If that’s MyCarthyism, well, good; you can’t say it didn’t work.

And if that plays into the tinfoil hatter’s narrative, even better; “well, the pharma-news-government-public health-medicine cabal won’t let me be anti-immunization anymore, they’re just too powerful.” Fine with me. It’s time for and endgame strategy for cray.

If you can point me to the post where I failed to grasp that companies don’t hire people with extreme beliefs to sell or represent their products, I’d appreciate it.

And I’d also appreciate it if you stopped talking down to me from the lofty heights of branding-imaging*** know-how as if I’d just entered the 21rst century from another dimension and you were the sole possessor of the keys to cross-platform promotional wisdom.

It’s not that I doubt that you know every single thing about the terrain and how to negotiate it inside-out. It’s that it’s not what I’m talking about.

(I was about to apologize for having been snippy in my previous reply to you when I saw that you’d upped the condescension ante, actually. And I’d prefer that to this. But please cut it out.)

squirrellite: And on the celebrity anti-vax theme, Jim Carrey has been mentioned many times in this blog and I don’t remember any calls to ban him from performing as an actor.

I can’t believe I’m attempting to defend Carrey, but here you go:
1. Jim Carrey didn’t call anyone Nazis on a public network.
2. He never made himself the sole face of an anti-vax campaign.
3. He shut up about the whole thing right quick when he and McCarthy split. Funny that. Which leads to 4:
Carrey is not necessarily responsible for what he said back then. He’s a pretty homely dude, after all. I mean, Hollywood homely, but still.

Jenny McCarthy makes her living by expressing her beliefs and opinions on a range of topics from an assortment of media platforms. There’s nothing to judge her work by other than that.

Jenny McCarthy is your straw herring. I have no particular reason to believe that her paid utterances have anything whatever to do with what she “really” “thinks.”

She is an actress. A persona.

And there’s plenty of reason to think that she can’t be counted on not to say stupid and dangerous things of an anti-vax nature when she’s operating without oversight, such as that provided by newspaper editors or TV producers.

So, people have hired her for the luxury of vetting her every comment? Where is this plenitude? Why the hell are we talking about not just the imagined contents of Jenny McCarthy’s mind, but the imagined distribution of its eigenstates?

Or — if she did sketch comedy — a script. But she doesn’t do sketch comedy. She gets hired to say what she thinks. There’s a reason to think that’s potentially problematic. And there’s therefore a reason to object that doesn’t apply to Schneider/State Farm.

So, it would be OK to instead object to Schneider on the basis of his character’s portraying zeroth-level office staff as an ignorant, obnoxious caricature of hard-working people trying to make ends meet?

Pareidolius:
How DARE you be so condescending as to reply to something other than what Ann is talking about just because Ann doesn’t know what she’s talking about? At long last, sir, have you no decency? Oh the ARROGANCE of talking down from the lofty heights of promotional wisdom only you have scaled… or advertising 101, a score or two of popular books on advertising/PR available at the public library, regular commentary in a plethora of marketing/branding blogs, and basic principles of the field drawn from Aristotles Rhetoric.

You, sir, are naught but a BULLY, and as such nothing you have say has any merit whatsoever so STFU, go away and learn how to think!

…hmm, I did find the following on Wikipedia:

No fallacy is so relentlessly mis-recognized as “ad hominem” argumentation. Ironically, it is well-known to poor debaters as exactly what it warns against: a club with which to bludgeon your opponent rather than to refute his/her argumentation. Simply wait for your opponent to say something that can be interpreted as un-nice and then pounce. Ad hominem” is only committed when you are stating criticism of a argument’s proponent in order to suggest that the argument itself is thereby weakened. The sophist’s favorite trick of trying to provoke frustration from an opponent, and then leaping on the first sign of frustration as “You’re resorting to ad hominem! Your argument is clearly weak!” is … itself ad hominem.

But we all know all know the rocks in the field of Wikipedia are frequently devoid of ore… 😉

What a quizzical article. Who knew Rob Schneider has a stance on vaccines? Who actually gives a rats? Were people listening to Rob Schneider or something? And who cares about some chick on some magazine I’ve never heard of either? What’s the worst that can happen, some bread doesn’t have an additive in it now? oooooh. I’m defriending the twit who linked to this article on fb.

The point of bringing up Jim Carrey is simply to note that orac and other commenters were not calling for banning him as an actor simply because of his expressed antivaccine views, which seems to be the point of some of the comments.

@sadmar,

Regrettably, I haven’t seen any of Werner Herzog’s films although I have wanted to watch Aguirre some time.

I wonder where that clip was filmed. It has a northern Arizona look to it.
The bit with the tow truck reminds me of one or two of my efforts to push start my own car.

1) WHO do you think acted wrongly in this matter?
2) WHAT do you think they did that was wrong?
3) WHAT should they have done instead?

I don’t think anybody acted wrongly. So that takes care of (2) and (3).

I, personally, speaking for myself, do not see how Rob Schneider’s appearance in that commercial was doing anti-vax-related harm to anybody or anything. Including the reputation of State Farm. They weren’t using him as a brand ambassador. He wasn’t in a position of corporate influence. And he isn’t exactly a powerful, influential figure generally. He was just playing a character in one of their spots. Plus, he happens to be the Canary Party’s celebrity stooge.

So. Given that the pro-vax side didn’t really gain any ground by the action (or prevent any from being lost), I, personally, don’t think the action was warranted. Especially because — still speaking for myself, personally! — it does look witch-hunt-y enough that there’s some risk that persuadable people will be turned off by it.

Most of the art linked to at the bottom is outstanding. However, there are the occasional overly exquisitely-surreal *expressing of ones’ self, or something* that should only be never be viewed by any functional, rational, human or otherwise, organic or synthetic — or a mass anomaly when all mixed up together with the creepy line drawings on top like BOX from a bad Logan’s Pun. Ever. It causes ‘tics’…

Though, I *think* it may have broken me out of my shell of static gifs of ceiling cats and fish that say “I swear to God; When I evolve I’m going to kill you all”.

Annnd, I hate it when I misplace my link of surreal ceiling cats, fish, and general charcoal-scratch nastiness and can not remember the artists’ name…. They were interviewed by James Corbett, once……

This website is really, really cool, as others have pointed out. Repeatedly. Again, and again…
Most of the art linked to at the bottom is outstanding. However, there are the occasional overly exquisitely-surreal *expressing of ones’ self, or something

Thank you for the kind words, Tim, which mean a lot, coming as they do from another exponent of a non-linear rhetorical style.
The animated GIFs of which you speak started out as illustrations of particular posts, until I was persuaded to pull them together in one place. Possibly I have been exposed to too many Renaissance woodcuts and etchings.

BEIJING — China has fined the British pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) $488.8 million (3 billion Yuan) for a “massive bribery network” to get doctors and hospitals to use its products. Five former employees were sentenced to two to four years in jail, but ordered deported instead of imprisoned, according to state news agency Xinhua today.

The guilty verdict was delivered after a one day closed door trail in Changsha, the capital city of Hunan province. The fine was the biggest ever imposed by a Chinese court.

The court gave Mark Reilly, former head of GSK Chinese operations, a three-year prison sentence with a four-year reprieve, which meant he is set to be deported instead of serving his time.’

Everything the doctor said in his statement concerning the Amish, and everything printed is true and matches up.
In a population of 10,000 there was 1 person, a child with autism. That makes the ratio 10,000 to 1.

Unless we presume that the 10,000 dont exist for some reason or do not represent some part of that community that is studied, which is not true. This group has not vaccinated, ever, and there are 10,000 people amongst them.

In your efforts to shill and lie, you forgot that the numbers presented are factual as is the evidence.
One in 10,000 = 1 / 10,000

You Pro Pharma shills are meeting your fate, which is scorn, by facts and evidence now compelling a real argument. Shouting people down and bullying no longer works. Toodles.

Speaking as an engineer, the son of an engineer and the son of a climate change denialist(same person, my father). Engineers are trained to troubleshoot ie. identify problems, identify the cause and above all solve it. Where scientists above all identify the cause. This often leads me to reject a cause of a problem based on its perceived probability. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishikawa_diagram.
Notice Environment is 1/6 fishbones. HAHA.

Rather than getting to the bottom of every potential cause, I am forced to move on to more probable cause until those don’t pan out, then its back to the drawing board to consider the causes that were ignored.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve overlooked a potential cause because I “knew” it couldn’t be it, only to find out it was.

This method of problem analysis is unscientific, but completely necessary for engineering. I suspect it is in diagnostic medicine as well. There is more at stake than just the furthering of understanding and time constraints as well.

Note, I’m an integration engineer rather than a cutting edge design engineer who would be looking at the latest science and implementing it.

The vast majority of engineers are integration and support rather than design. So suspect this type of thinking when talking to engineers.

At any rate, we may now have gauges of anti-vax fever because
1. Andy’s film about the late Alex is currently being hawked through the website- Tugg- which requires ticket sales in advance in order to initiate showings ( see AoA for the link). So far the Dallas showing is only half sold out**.. Showings in other cities are possibilities.
2. TMR has a fundraiser which is being tracked: one of the original TMs has been stricken with metastatic breast cancer: so far they have been able to raise 12K USD of the 100K they seek. At least this money may actually help a family unlike their Team TMR efforts which enable families to pay for expensive woo,

I wonder if you are familar with research about cognitive styles? Simon Baron Cohen- as well- has material about scientific/ engineering/ techical professionals in respect to
ASDs ( those professionals may score higher on his ASQ test). There is also research on children of engineers. You might want to look entries which explore cognitive styles, field independence, levelling/ sharpening, cognitive complexity et al.
Wikip- is a start.

AT, as has been pointed out to you Dr. Wiznitzer did not say that the Amish in Ohio don’t vaccinate, nor did he state that in the Ohio Amish community only 1 in 10,000 children exhibited autism.

But, just for the sake of argument, let’s assume he had said that, okay?

In that case, he was, quite simply, wrong.

See “Underimmunization in Ohio’s Amish: Parental Fears Are a Greater Obstacle Than Access to Care”, Wenger et al, PMID:21708796. The study found that majority of Amish parents do, in fact, vaccinate their children–only 14% of the parents reported none of their children had received immunizations–and among the minority that don’t, the most common reasons cited were the same anti-vaccine fueled fears that have infected people around the country.

The vast majority of engineers are integration and support rather than design. So suspect this type of thinking when talking to engineers.

I suspect it so, Paul. But they should still admit they’re wrong about glass because it does not undergo first order phase transition.

I post, not to persuade the prudent nor pragmatic whose #3 Fujita-scaled orificially expelled wild-hare approximations are nonetheless often perused, but rather so that the fence-sitters will have a certain peaceful assurance and courage to decide to not turn into engineers.

Gardasil is a vaccine manufactured by MERCK Pharmaceuticals, who advertise your daughter will be one less victim of cervical cancer if they take advantage of this new wonder drug. MERCK is also the $134 Billion Dollar Pharmaceutical Corporation found guilty in a court of law for causing at least 27,000 heart attacks with its last FDA approved drug, VIOXX.

MERCK claims Gardasil prevents cancer in girls in an age group that almost never gets cervical cancer, so it’s impossible to know if it really works. It’s also uncertain how well Gardasil will perform in the real world, instead of with hand-picked, clinical-trial subjects…

Some Mel Gibson bashing here too, not surprisingly.
No one can deny what he said was true, so its attack the messenger when you dont like the message, a Marxist smear tactic.

Mel said ‘Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.’

Henry Ford, 80 years prior said ‘Corral 50 of the worlds wealthiest Jews, and there will be no wars’
He is regarded as a great man.

How could so many people be wrong about Jewry? Theres of course-
Votaire, Shakespeare, Martin Luther, Charles Lindburgh, General Patton, Paul (1-Thessalonians 2:15), Jesus Christ (John 8:44, Rev 2:9), St John Chrysostrom, Even Henry Kissinger himself a Jew said A Group of people that have been kicked out of 109 countries must be doing something wrong.
Jews, who control our CDC, were banned from practicing medicine in the Middle Ages, and were suspected of being behind the Black Plague, their confessions are on record for dumping flea bitten rats down the wells of Christians, per their Rabbis directives…the land was said to be contaminated and could then be bought for pennies on the dollar. And their arch enemies were killed in the process.
The confessions are verifiable easily. The TALMUD, their holiest book, gives and sanctions such attacks on all Goyim or non jews, said to be animals in this book.
Glad they run our media, Banking, Govt and Medicine as well.
Ask not if something is Anti Semitic, (Canard) ask if is true.

There are many Amish Communities in Ohio.
Some do and some dont vaccinate.

Those that do not have a lower incidence, almost nil, as far as autism is concerned, not surprisingly.
You cant spin this, try as you like. The doctor made reference to that group of people that he sees and treats, specifically IN Northeast Ohio.
So Of 6 million sperm, were YOU really the fastest?

Everything the doctor said in his statement concerning the Amish, and everything printed is true and matches up.

So you think that the statement you posted:

Dr. Max Wiznitzer [..] admitted […] that the rate of autism in […] the largest Amish community in the USA with low rates of vaccination] […

Matches up with what Dr. Wiznitzer actually said, having asked the people who actually vaccinate Amish children?

: I was told that there is a very high rate of vaccination amongst the Amish population

Clearly your reading comprehension is poor, since you claim:

This group has not vaccinated, ever, and there are 10,000 people amongst them.

How does a “very high rate of vaccination” equate to “low rates of vaccination” or to “has not vaccinated, ever”?

According to Dr. Wiznitzer we have a highly vaccinated population with a very low rate of autism. This isn’t support of vaccination causing autism, quite the opposite, if anything. It supports the view that autism is largely genetic, as we know that the Amish have unusual genetics, perhaps due to their relatively limited gene pool.

In your efforts to shill and lie, you forgot that the numbers presented are factual as is the evidence.

In your efforts to spread misinformation you not only appear to have lost the ability to read simple English but you expect other people to be unable to read it either. Curious.

You Pro Pharma shills are meeting your fate, which is scorn, by facts and evidence now compelling a real argument.

Facts and evidence? Real argument? I must have missed them somehow.

Shouting people down and bullying no longer works.

The “evidence” you presented in support of your position says the exact opposite. I pointed this out. How is this shouting or bullying?

There are many Amish Communities in Ohio.
Some do and some dont vaccinate.

Citation needed. I’ve provdied a Pubmed-indexed report providing evidence of an Ohio Amish community that do vaccinate. Please provide a similar Pubmed indexed citation to a report addressing an Ohio Amish community that does not vaccinate.

So Of 6 million sperm, were YOU really the fastest?

Good luck with that name-calling thing. I hope it works for you on some juvenile level. Just be aware that it neither undermines my position nor supports yours.

There are many Amish Communities in Ohio. Some do and some dont vaccinate. Those that do not have a lower incidence, almost nil, as far as autism is concerned, not surprisingly. You cant spin this, try as you like.

A neurologist who works with the Amish in NE Ohio states that they have a, “very high rate of vaccination”, and, “out of ten thousand of individuals in our population, we have one child with autism”. These are direct quotes from Dr. Wiznitzer. This is the opposite of what you claim, yet you accuse others of trying to spin it? That’s hilarious.

Also ignoring the facts that the Amish have a whole host of other genetic diseases – some of which occur so rarely outside of the Amish that they didn’t even have names (until they were researched in Amish populations)….just take a trip through an Amish graveyard, it is very reminiscent of what it was like in just about every other graveyard before vaccines.

The TALMUD, their holiest book, gives and sanctions such attacks on all Goyim or non jews, said to be animals in this book

This statement is quite simply false: you’re confusing the Torah and the Talmud. It’s the Torah that is considered by Jews to be their holiest book (and no, they’re not the same thing).

And what does the Torah say about treating others, jew or non-Jew alike? According to Rabbi Hillel in the first century CE, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole of the Torah: the rest is commentary. Go and study it.”

Aguirre is definitely the first Herzog to see if you haven’t seen one. A ‘must see’ for any cinephile. It was made for next to no money, and the method was basically to do what the characters did. The story is about conquistadors who, having climbed over the mountains into the headwaters of the Amazon, built primitive wood rafts and floated down river in search of El Dorado. So Herzog choppers the crew into the headwaters, has the cast climb far enough up the mountain so he can film them climbing down. Then they built primitive wood rafts and floated down river, shooting the story as they went. Visually stunning, with a haunting score — a political allegory that, sadly, will probably never cease to be pertinent.

The dancing chicken is from Stroszek. IMHO Herzog’s best film. It was shot in Wisconsin. The story is about three misfits in Berlin who, halfway through the film, pool their resources and move to rural Wisconsin in hopes of ‘getting a new lease on life’ It doesn’t go as planned. It’s one of Werner’s funnier films, but also quite tragic. The main actor’s character names are their real names. The lead is the amazing Bruno S., a de-institutionalized mental patient in real life, basically playing himself in the film. I’m sure you can find synopses on the web.

The documentary about the making of Fitzcaraldo — Burden of Dream, by Les Blank — is basically the same story as the Fitzcaraldo, but better, as Herzog himself is a more interesting character than Fitzgerald. Kinski wasn’t quite right for that part. He was a last minute replacement for Jason Robards who fell ill and couldn’t continue.

Burden of Dreams works OK on a small screen, but Aguirre and Stroszek are ‘cinematic’ in the sense they need a bigger screen, a darkened room sans distractions to appreciate the ‘texture’ in the parts that are ‘slow’ by Hollywood forward-moving-plot-action norms…

Are you a fan of Gibson? Hisoutbursts make sickening reading, as does finding out that he punched his girlfriend in the face, twice, while she was holding their child, and afterwards claimed she deserved it.

No one can deny what he said was true, […] Mel said ‘Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.’

That’s just idiotic. Were the Jews responsible for the Iran-Iraq wars? The Boer War? The Falklands War? The American War of Independence? The American Civil War? The English Civil War? Or even WW2? I could name dozens of wars in history that had nothing whatsoever to do with Jews by even the greatest conspiratorial stretch of the imagination.

Henry Ford, 80 years prior said ‘Corral 50 of the worlds wealthiest Jews, and there will be no wars’ He is regarded as a great man.

Ford had some great ideas about mass-producing automobiles. He was also a rabid anti-semite, though that didn’t affect his hiring policies. The two are not incompatible, and his success making cars does not support the veracity of his views on Jews.

How could so many people be wrong about Jewry?

How could so many people have been wrong about a million other things? Flat earth? Virgin birth? Bloodletting? That’s the argumentum ad populum fallacy, should you have any interest in learning how to put forward a logical argument, which seems doubtful.

Jews, who control our CDC,

Huh?

were banned from practicing medicine in the Middle Ages, and were suspected of being behind the Black Plague, their confessions are on record for dumping flea bitten rats down the wells of Christians, per their Rabbis directives…the land was said to be contaminated and could then be bought for pennies on the dollar. And their arch enemies were killed in the process.

Even if this laughable medieval BS did happen to be true, what possible relevance does it have to today? You know what else was suspected of being behind the plague? Earthquakes, the Devil, miasmas, dogs, cats, God’s wrath, sleeping during the day, opening south-facing windows and the beauty of young girls. Humans like to find scapegoats for misfortune, and because Jews tend to look and dress differently and behave differently, they make a perfect target for ignorant knuckle-dragging xenophobes.

The confessions are verifiable easily.

Confessions obtained by torture hundreds of years ago are easily verifiable? really? Even if they were, again what possible relevance does that have today? Christians at that time behaved horribly. Does that mean that contemporary Christians are evil? This is such nonsense I find it hard to believe anyone still takes it seriously.

The TALMUD, their holiest book, gives and sanctions such attacks on all Goyim or non jews, said to be animals in this book.

Even if they did run these areas of society, which they clearly don’t, I don’t see why this would be a bad thing.

Ask not if something is Anti Semitic, (Canard) ask if is true.

Well it isn’t true that Jews poisoned wells causing the Black Death, it isn’t true that they are to blame for all wars, it isn’t true that the Talmud calls non-Jews animals nor does it tell Jews to kill non-Jews. Glad we cleared that up.

Those that do not have a lower incidence, almost nil, as far as autism is concerned, not surprisingly.
You cant spin this, try as you like. The doctor made reference to that group of people that he sees and treats, specifically IN Northeast Ohio.

Like Holmes County? There’s a certain difference between 1 in 271 and 1 in 10,000.

You’ll have to show me the Mel Gibson bashing. All I see is comments that publicity about some of his statements and actions has not been positive for him. This contradicts the notion that there is no bad publicity.

Gee, I think I’m going to set myself up as “The Grub Granny”, and tell all those pseudo “food allergy” idiots, “If you have not been medically diagnosed as having celiac disease or something else that precludes your eating a normal, healthy diet, shut up and eat your bread, vegetables, meat and dairy. Quit being such a whining pansy convinced food manufacturers are out to get you.

A bit O/T but this comment on AoA FB characterises the ignorance and dishonesty of the vaccinesdidit group:

Maria Senjudo Lopez So precious, my son David went through the same thing at the age od 2, he also was not born with it. Kelsey-Seybold gave him 2 sets of MMR vaccine, I had to put him in a walker and he did not speak until the age of 4. It was the nurses mistake, unfortunately this happened during the 911,and because of the fear of smallpox outbreak, homeland security put a freeze on any compensation, but that nurse did get fired.
28 minutes ago

@ Science Mom: That poster replied to a post put up by Stagmom, who commented that her oldest child’s autism was caused by vaccines. Stagmom also claims that her middle child’s autism was caused by vaccines, so she did not vaccinate her youngest child…who also has a diagnosis of autism. Stagmom’s youngest unvaccinated child is the most severely impacted by autism.

I was working as a public health nurse on September 11, 2001 and the Government certainly did not deny compensation to any child with a real vaccine injury.

There’s another FB group called “Banned by Foodbabe” (as I type this we are 2,700+ members strong). It is a group for those of us who asked Foodbabe a question, or made a correction to one of her posts, and were quickly banned from posting on her page—rather odd, considering she is all about transparency. So she says. It’s interesting to note that, for the most part, everyone was quite civil and made legitimate posts to get banned. I got my ban for asking why she is incorporated in Delaware, but operates out of North Carolina.

And what does the Torah say about treating others, jew or non-Jew alike? According to Rabbi Hillel in the first century CE, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole of the Torah: the rest is commentary. Go and study it.”

It’s also one of the non-negotiable, this-is-what-it-means-to-be-you-why?-because-you’re-Jewish points of Passover:

You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

That means “gentile.” Same word. And it really is a particular, repeated point of emphasis in both the Passover service and the bible. (Exodus, Leviticus, probably elsewhere.)

The TALMUD, their holiest book, gives and sanctions such attacks on all Goyim or non jews, said to be animals in this book.

The you won’t have any trouble locating which passages in which book of the Talmud state this.

Figurative language to that effect is used three or four times in the Talmud, which is unsurprising, since it’s not Judaism’s holiest book, but rather 6200 pages of rabbinical commentary and exegesis that probably comes as close to including an argument for everything and its opposite as it’s possible to do.

A minutely and mind-numbingly detailed argument, quite frequently.

In any event. There are several instances of it. But they aren’t broad directives, or representative sentiments, or position statements. They’re just some rabbi from the second century’s way of saying that intermarriage is absolutely prohibited. And doing it with reference to Ezekiel 23:20:

She lusted after their paramours, whose flesh is like the flesh of donkeys and whose issue is like the issue of horses

And, you know. I can’t say that NOBODY takes that literally. But it’s probably fair to say that there’s less of a presumption of gospel truth than there is in Christianity.

Hence the phrase “gospel truth.”

Henry Ford, 80 years prior said ‘Corral 50 of the worlds wealthiest Jews, and there will be no wars’ He is regarded as a great man.

He’s regarded as a great innovator. And he may have been a perfectly swell fellow, for all I know. But he was just incredibly anti-semitic, even by the standards of the day. I mean, he’s responsible for the English publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, ffs.

Hey, AT.

Do you realize that you’re pretty much parroting unreconstructed propaganda from the turn of the last century that was brought to this country by a bunch of loony White Russians who’d been effectively living in the middle ages right up until the October Revolution forced them to confront modernity?

Because you pretty much are. And it was a very sad thing already, back then.

…

I guess I’d like to think you had a better, happier future in front of you than that blueprint leads to. I mean, this…

were banned from practicing medicine in the Middle Ages, and were suspected of being behind the Black Plague, their confessions are on record for dumping flea bitten rats down the wells of Christians, per their Rabbis directives…the land was said to be contaminated and could then be bought for pennies on the dollar. And their arch enemies were killed in the process.

…is just not true. It was propaganda then, in the middle ages. Literally. As in: How monarchs kept people from blaming them for war and taxation and so forth.

That’s just idiotic. Were the Jews responsible for the Iran-Iraq wars? The Boer War? The Falklands War? The American War of Independence? The American Civil War? The English Civil War? Or even WW2? I could name dozens of wars in history that had nothing whatsoever to do with Jews by even the greatest conspiratorial stretch of the imagination.

Not if you already imagine that Jews control everything via banks.

With the exception of the American War of Independence, I’ve seen every one of those explained that way.

Narad,
J EWs aint Semitic any more than Im a unicorn.
Theyre mongol Khazars from modern day Caucus mountains, 8th century converts and former Phallic worshippers. Heres a clue..why doesnt Woody Allen or Alan Dirtshitz look Arabic or Semtic? Because they dont have a drop of Semitic blood in their bodies. 90% of Israelis are Khazar converts!

On Kissinger:
At the height of his fury at Jerusalem for violating the October 1973 cease-fire and surrounding Egypt’s Third Army, Kissinger grumbled at one WSAG meeting, “If it were not for the accident of my birth, I would be anti-Semitic.”
In other moments of exasperation, he would note that “any people that has been persecuted for two thousand years must be doing something wrong”
-Walter Isaacson, Kissinger: a Biography (Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, and Faber & Faber Ltd, London1992)

On Boer Wars- De Beers and Rothschild.. again a J EW orchestrated War. On Iran and Iraq-same thing, divide and conquer, Iraq was planned decades in Advance. See Netanyahus comments of the oil Pipeline TO Haifa Israel from Kirkuk Iraq per Reuters.
WW1, WW2, Vietnam, Iraq all J EW Wars.
Vietnam spent us off the gold standard so Milton Friedman and Co. could print us into oblivion which theyre doing, our dollar losing 95% of its purchasing power.
WW2 gave us the theft of Palestine for Khazar converts, World Govt. ala UN and spread communism TO 11 nations. 60 million died over a border skirmish that J EWs started, they declared war ON Germany in 1933 and their Marxist minions were slithering all over Germany and EUrope trying to violently Bolshevize them as they did the USSR, killing 66 million Christians from 1917-1949 See Nobel Prize Winner Solzhenitzyn’s Gulag Archipelago for reference #2 specifically.
JEW LA Times columnist laid it out very clearly for all Goyim/Non Jews/ Animals.

‘I appreciate Foxman’s concerns. And maybe my life spent in a New Jersey-New York/Bay Area-L.A. pro-Semitic cocoon has left me naive. But I don’t care if Americans think we’re running the news media, Hollywood, Wall Street or the government. I just care that we get to keep running them.’ -Joel Stein, LA Times

Krebiozen.
Again, more selective Talmudic logic and shilling in a disinfo form.

‘Dr. Wiznitzer said those Amish were vaccinated. Well, OK, interesting. That’s half right, according to what I reported about that same area back in June of 2005:

“The autism rate for U.S. children is 1 in 166, according to the federal government. The autism rate for the Amish around Middlefield, Ohio, is 1 in 15,000, according to Dr. Heng Wang.

“He means that literally: Of 15,000 Amish who live near Middlefield, Wang is aware of just one who has autism. If that figure is anywhere near correct, the autism rate in that community is astonishingly low.

“Wang is the medical director, and a physician and researcher, at the DDC Clinic for Special Needs Children, created three years ago to treat the Amish in northeastern Ohio.

“I take care of all the children with special needs,” he said, putting him in a unique position to observe autism. “The one case Wang has identified is a 12-year-old boy.”

He said half the children in the area were vaccinated, half weren’t. That child, he said, was vaccinated, but let’s not split hairs here. Either vaccinated or unvaccinated, that’s a low rate — 1 in 5000. The question I didn’t think to ask at the time but will soon, is, exactly how were those half vaccinated? Flu shots for pregnant moms? Hep B at birth? Chickenpox and MMR on the same day at one year? Rotavirus, Hep B, Hep A, and on and on? Or did it look more like the less intense, less front-loaded schedule in place in the rest of the country back before the autism epidemic began? The kind Jenny and Jim and J.B. and Jerry (hey, the four J’s!) keep harking back to when the autism rate was, like, 1 in 10,000 and we still managed to
stave off wholesale plagues.

Let’s even stipulate that the vaccine schedule for every single Amish child is now fully loaded and follows the CDC to a T. What is Wiznitzer’s point? That the Amish genes protect them? Well, good for them, then, let’s find out why. Or, that some kind of other environmental risk is absent? In that case, autism is a genetic vulnerability with an environmental trigger, and something about the Amish world is not triggering it, which puts us back about where I started four years ago. There would have been plenty of time to have the answer right now if Julie Gerberding weren’t still filibustering the question by talking about numerators, denominators and getting more research into the pipeline as fast as bureaucratically possible (meaning never, never, never).

Critics of the Amish Anomaly — like critics of the idea that vaccines might be implicated in autism — want to have it every which way. First, they want to say I just plain missed all the autism cases — droning on about the Clinic For Special Children, which refused to speak with me over a period of many months. When one of their doctors did finally talk to a blogger whose stated purpose was to tear my reporting apart (a “fraud,” he called me), that doctor said, oh yes, they do see Amish kids with autism — but then went on to say those were ONLY kids with other identifiable genetic disorders. In other words, risk factors. He specifically said they DO NOT see “idiopathic autism,” a basically nonsense phrase that he used to mean autism without any other accompanying disorders. In other words, they don’t see the kind of autism now running at a rate of 1 in 100 or so in the rest of the country. The kind no one can figure out. The kind that is destroying a generation and their families and our future along with it. (“You don’t have an affected child,” people tell me. Yes, but I have an affected world.)
By asserting the Amish have an autism rate of 1 in 10,000 Wiznitzer is in fact scoring a point — they call it an “own goal,” an “oops, I didn’t mean to tap the other team’s shot in.” The point he’s accidentally but effectively reinforcing is the one made by the unfailingly intelligent Bernadine Healy — that there are so many, many obvious studies being left undone by those afraid to do them, even as they sneer and snarl at the rest of us. The Amish are just one study left undone among — well, one among ten thousand or so.

Aw, poor poor Olmsted. He writes an idiotic article about the Amish in Lancaster County that completely ignored the clinic. Then he whines because when he does find out about it they won’t talk to him because they already know he will do a hatchet job, and that he has shown he is incompetent.

Poor Olmsted?
If one doesn’t agree with the Pro Pharma Narrative such as you espouse, then he is mocked, right, Mr Marxist? 36 injections as an infant..= good for you, so how did the world ever survive and populate itself prior to making drug companies billions goys and girls?

Common substances found in vaccines include:
•Aluminum gels or salts of aluminum which are added as adjuvants to help the vaccine stimulate a better response. Adjuvants help promote an earlier, more potent response, and more persistent immune response to the vaccine.

See also: “Aluminum in Vaccines: What you should know

•Antibiotics which are added to some vaccines to prevent the growth of germs (bacteria) during production and storage of the vaccine. No vaccine produced in the United States contains penicillin.

•Egg protein is found in influenza and yellow fever vaccines, which are prepared using chicken eggs. Ordinarily, persons who are able to eat eggs or egg products safely can receive these vaccines.

•Formaldehyde is used to inactivate bacterial products for toxoid vaccines, (these are vaccines that use an inactive bacterial toxin to produce immunity.) It is also used to kill unwanted viruses and bacteria that might contaminate the vaccine during production. Most formaldehyde is removed from the vaccine before it is packaged.

•Monosodium glutamate (MSG) and 2-phenoxy-ethanol which are used as stabilizers in a few vaccines to help the vaccine remain unchanged when the vaccine is exposed to heat, light, acidity, or humidity.

•Thimerosal is a mercury-containing preservative that is added to vials of vaccine that contain more than one dose to prevent contamination and growth of potentially harmful bacteria.

For children with a prior history of allergic reactions to any of these substances in vaccines, parents should consult their child’s healthcare provider before vaccination.

It all sounds so fantastic. Aborted tissue, monkey cells, calf serum, monkey kidney cells, et al
Just trust your baby and infants health with your doctor and the great scientists here (If we cant trust billion dollar companies and their employees and Zionists, who can we trust?

AT/AT/A (all of whom are the same person): Alright. This is your one and only warning. I’m very “hands-off” when it comes to moderation. I rarely ban anyone for anything. However, there is one thing I will not tolerate, and that’s blatant bigotry. Your antisemitism qualifies. Knock it off. There will not be a second warning. You will just be banned.

Don’t push me. I cut my skeptical teeth back in the late 1990s and early 2000s combatting online Holocaust denial, primarily on Usenet. I know all the tricks. I know all the tropes anti-Semites use to try to deny they’re anti-Semites. There’s nothing you can say that I haven’t seen before dozens of times. Knock it off.

Ann
I knew nothing about Henry Ford Publishing the English Protocols of Zion.
I do know that with every Ford purchased, a copy from his Dearborn Press ‘The International Jew’ was given with a car, for free.
I do not know when this was discontinued, but great pressure was put on Ford and others as American society began a transformation and Eastern European domination about the time of the formation of the Federal Reserve.
I hope this is palatable for Mr Orac.

I must ask you this.
As far as cremation is concerned, Im told it take 3 hours to process a body.
That’s 8 bodies per day, 240 per month and 3000 per year. With no down time, maintenance or cleaning.
Auschwitz, the largest of any so called death camps, had 20 chambers. The Final Solution was the last 18 months of the war. My math only shows about 90,000 bodies could be processed. Or is math anti semitic too?
Im just asking, given that you combatted it and all and are much more astute at it that I and my math must be.
The first hand accounts all say the bodies were cremated, they had to go somewhere, and we are told it was in chambers to be burnt. Im very interested in this discussion.
Thanks or Shalom

Who was the poster who recommended we adopt a black-ops/false flag strategy, masquerading as anti-vax proponents while posting all kinds of obviously false and inappropriate statements to discredit all anti-vaxers by association?

Cause my best guess is he’s either returned as AT or AT’s just trolling for lulz.

Is it possible to breed an engineer and a scientist together or does it require genetic modification?

No genetic modification for myself. I used to be known as a scientist, still am but….big fat maybe (i.e. my career doesn’t depend on it)…I may train as a Mech engineer only for my own pleasure (I want to have a garage twice or three time as big as the house). As far as the job (read: career), my boss and the scrum master want me to stay in my company until retirement but during a few (say 104) weekend, I want to work on a 5 liters twin-turbo (at least) diesel engine (engine block: aluminium, engine parts: high-strength titanium) making 1400 horsepower to fit in a car of my own design but looking like the FF6 custom made cars who made police cars flip over them :D.

On the other hands, the more I know about Neuroscience, the more I really think that my ignorance is limitless and it’ll take centuries of research to make me satisfied. That is despite having been handed a server with 2 terabytes of ram to spend some paid time (4 to 8 hours per week which I have to match at home on my personal time) on a personal neuroscience project (I’ll work on that next year).

Novalax: Thanks for your posts, it will go far in showing others that I teach and work with the absolute moral poverty that anti-vaxxers have.

Not to mention poor character and the absolute inability to empathize or tell the truth. Or even *recognize* the truth. At AOA they’re still crowing over poor Alex’s death. Absolutely nauseating considering that his blood is on their hands. (And I’m honestly surprised no one over there has murdered their kids yet.)

And not that it matters now, but the caucasus mountains aren’t near Mongolia, though some individuals may have Mongolian ancestry. Blame Genghis Khan for that. Also, if I remember right, the main religions in those areas are Eastern Orthodox and Islam, and they simply don’t have any sizable Jewish population to speak of since, you know, World War 2. AT is apparently unaware that conversion and population dispersion happens. While keeping marriage in the religious group is the supposed ideal, humans lead messy little lives, so a lot of genetic material gets mixed in. Speaking personally, my step-great-grandpa was an Austrian Jew, Great-Grandma was a straight-up Californian with Spanish ancestry. So, yeah intermarriage happens.

Krebiozen. Again, more selective Talmudic logic and shilling in a disinfo form.

You claimed at #80 that Dr. Wiznitzer stated that the Amish he sees have, “low rates of vaccination”, when he actually stated they have a, “very high rate of vaccination”. Isn’t that a blatant lie even by your twisted and bigoted logic?

The fact that Dr. Wiznitzer was only aware of 1 case of autism in 10,000 children doesn’t necessarily mean that only 1 case existed (as Olmsted wrote, “If that figure is anywhere near correct, the autism rate in that community is astonishingly low”). I can think of several reasons he may not have been aware of autistic Amish children, making that figure incorrect. A few decades ago autism rates in the US were thought to be 4 to 5 per 10,000 children for autism spectrum disorders and approximately 2 per 10,000 for classic autism.

It is very probably increased awareness and widened diagnostic criteria that have led to the apparent increase in incidence of both ASD and CA. We don’t know if those factors have had any effect among Amish communities. Would an Amish child exhibiting signs of autism be as likely to be taken to a doctor and to be diagnosed as a non-Amish child? Is there a stigma attached to such a diagnosis among the Amish? It seems entirely possible to me that some of the same factors that led to underdiagnosis of autism in the wider population 30 years ago are still in operation among the Amish of NE Ohio, which would explain the similar incidence that Dr. Wiznitzer reported.

By the way, you quoted Olmsted as stating, “The one case Wang has identified is a 12-year-old boy.” Curiously he omits to mention the fact that this boy was vaccinated.
Whatever way you look at it, what Dr. Wiznitzer reported is not consistent with the hypothesis that vaccination cause autism. You even had to lie about what he said to make it fit your prejudices.

Cause my best guess is he’s either returned as AT or AT’s just trolling for lulz.

“Trolling for lulz” was my initial thought, because AT was so lazy with the indolent cut-&-paste spamming from other people’s websites. The whole point of trolling is to get the maximum response from other people with the least amount of effort from oneself. But then AT got onto the Jewish-conspiracy topic, and the maggots started crawling out of the woodwork, and suddenly the comments were all his or her personal effort.

The “black ops” explanation is tempting… but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to hoist the false flag here at RI, where there is no need to blacken the reputation of anti-vaxxers.

that doctor said, oh yes, they do see Amish kids with autism — but then went on to say those were ONLY kids with other identifiable genetic disorders. In other words, risk factors. He specifically said they DO NOT see “idiopathic autism,” a basically nonsense phrase that he used to mean autism without any other accompanying disorders.

See, this is why I can’t go read AoA on a regular basis. The stupidity just flummoxes me.

Olmstead has just admitted that the “Amish Anomaly” he writes about, the amazingly low rate of autism among the Amish, does not exist. He thinks he can discount those cases as non-existent because they point very strongly towards someone else’s hypothesis of causation, but this makes no sense. Data doesn’t stop being data when it’s not going the way you wanted it to.

I’d say it has the ring of authenticity. It’s just difficult to credit because it defies comprehension. I mean, this little staple of Institute for Historical Review thought, for example…

they declared war ON Germany in 1933

…is based entirely and exclusively on a Daily Express story headlined “Judea Declares War on Germany” that any fool can plainly see does not report a declaration of war. They’re announcing plans for a boycott of German goods in response to Hitler’s becoming chancellor. Looking at it instantly reveals that. And there’s just zero room for confusion about it.

You’d have to be delusional to think it was anything else. In short. Non-colloquially. Meaning: “You’d have to hold a fixed, false belief that didn’t yield when confronted with facts that contradicted it.”

At least, engineers usually have (and know how to use) their own micrometer calipers which I find that one may need with increasing frequency as more and more old ValuCraft components get repackaged such as the $40 high-performance, hard-to- find, aftermarket fuelpump pushrod and the like.

I had a buddy that bought an old ford way back; He called it “Gouch”. Idk, it was some kind of 30’s ford truck. It was quick to get it running pretty smoothly but, for whatever reason, it would sometimes spontaneously slip the distributor gear on its’ shaft — This was always accompanied by a backfire though I don’t know if that was related to cause or effect (It was probably a valve/ignition timing problem due to worn timing components letting the camshaft ‘kick backward’ a little? ).

Anywho, he’d bought the lifetime warranty (they only had the pricey one) AutoBlown one so that when it did occasionally pop we’d just swing by and exchange it. Until one day it just would not go in. No amount of cordial until blue-in-the-face would convince the parts clerks (already nothing more than button pushers then) that it was wrong. Finally, “got a caliper?” Turns out, they still did. It was way fat. Who knew?

Interestingly, for some components (such as the starter motor for a 429) seemed to be more ‘rugged’ as the buddy-buster el cheapo over the lifetime warranty ones. I’d end up changing one everytime I went lead-sledding through some mud, should I happen to have been sadled with their *gold series.* Perhaps this was a ruse to just get people into the computers?

But all flavors of autoparts stores went tits up for the DIYer together with that final malady, that model of the modern parts warehouse — The introduction of the shiny, new computer inventory, the button-pusher clerk, and the stop directly at the counter – Do not proceed to parts directives. This also occured with tobacco products and electronic components at about the same time, I note.

Now that I couldn’t go and get the part for myself, I had to adapt to saying “I want a Bendix” ( which seemed odd at the time — was it actually listed as ‘Bendix’ originally on the screen? The screens were not visible to the customer then.) when what I really wanted was the cheapest GD starter drive/clutch they sold.

KING: Are you saying it will show that vaccinations played a part?
KARTZINEL: Absolutely.
KING: How will you respond to that, Dr. Wiznitzer?
WIZNITZER: Years ago, I thought about this idea among the Amish population here in northeast Ohio, to whom I am actually the neurologist. And I went to the public health nurses and said, tell me about their vaccination rates. And I was told that there is a very high rate of vaccination amongst the Amish population. Out of ten thousand of individuals in our population, we have one child with autism. I see all these children.
The fact is, we can’t basically use the argument. It’s much more complex than just vaccinated versus unvaccinated.

I’m surprised nobody picked up on the quite delightful description of FB on the Facebook link- Fraud Broad.

I know you yanks have embraced microbrewing with a passion (this side of the Pond if I see an American beer on a beer engine I go straight for it, rarely have I had a bad one), but over 4% as a session beer?
3.6-8% would qualify here. Anything over 4.2% is definitely not.

Denice, Your posts are. Usually as clear as any beverage treated with isinglass but how can something be “half sold out”?

I thank you for the compliment, sir,
It would more correctly be ‘half sold” BUT I was attempting a snark towards Andy who has _ENTIRELY sold out_, is an attention whore, fixes research, would probably do anything for money, dyes his hair an overly-youth and unrealistic brown, etc etc etc.

The Biguns of coors, miller, buttwiser .. All InBev now, as far as I’m concerned though BA pointed out my mistake over Blue Moon; I use the term like one would use *nazi* for various GHW or GW or Barack Obama Bush-with-a-tan variants of puppet politicians… The bad prognosis is just the same as well as those asshats spent millions per state to keep the 3.2s and 5.0s. In other words, all the shit devoid of nutrients, taste, or buzz — and with the added ‘been drinking?’ bud-fucking-smell so that cops can smell it like whatever that cancer-causing shit is in propane tanks that crawls up your nose at the slightest concentrations.

I *think* I first heard it from Live at the Hollywood Bowl — Monty Python:

“I find that american beer is alot like making love in a canoe — It’s fucking close to water.”

And not that it matters now, but the caucasus mountains aren’t near Mongolia, though some individuals may have Mongolian ancestry.

There are the Caucasus Mountains, and then there is Caucasia, which includes the mountains but also flat land North and South. Including Russian Dagestan, where ‘Chinghiz’ — i.e. ‘Genghiz’ — is a common first name (I had a colleague from there).

Anyway, the Khazar Khanate overlapped with the northern parts of Caucasia (though it extended further north and around to Crimea). It did *not* include the Caucasus Mountains. AT was only ranting about “mongol Khazars from modern day Caucus mountains” because he or she does not care about reality.

Between calling the Khazars “former Phallic worshippers”, and the earlier ranting about prostate tests, I suspect that AT is (a) male, and (b) is preoccupied or insecure.

David Gorski, a surgical oncologist and managing editor of the website Science-Based Medicine, criticized Hari’s warning about what she deemed the “sneaky” use of dried fish bladders, called isinglass, to clarify beer. Gorski notes that brewers have used the ingredient to sop up yeast and other solid particles since the 19th century. What’s more, critics say, the ingredient, widely considered natural, is made from swim bladders that fill with air not waste.

What’s that? Argument from antiquity….???

Also, you can tell just by the other stuff on the cover that it will promote woo. It has that “alt med natural lifestyle” feel to it.

… As to the discussion of firing/hiring, I can kind of see where Ann is coming from. Actors are hired to act, which means they are hired for their ability to perform as someone else. In that sense, no one cares about their personal issues; and actually what corporation digs into their employees’ beliefs anyway? They’d be accused of discrimination if they did that. Why do people expect actors to be excluded from that basic right? If you consider it to be like any other job, what you do on your own time doesn’t affect your job performance or capability of doing it.

At the same time, I think that being hired as a celebrity – as in, themselves and not a character – draws different implications. I personally am torn between separating the art from the artist and my only conclusion is that each person must decide when, where, for whom and what reasons activism is necessary.

I am glad Schneider lost the contract because I agree that he specifically undermines the business that he would have been promoting. Had he been hired to perform for an accounting firm I am not so sure I would have cared one way or the other.

@Ann #175

It’s also one of the non-negotiable, this-is-what-it-means-to-be-you-why?-because-you’re-Jewish points of Passover:

You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

That means “gentile.” Same word. And it really is a particular, repeated point of emphasis in both the Passover service and the bible. (Exodus, Leviticus, probably elsewhere.)

Not to mention that treating strangers well, inviting them to your home, feeding them and offering them a place to stay, making charitable donatioms, etc are all considered mitzvah; that is, good deeds. Hardly depicts Jews as spiteful towards others, does it?

Tim, you’re like the weird unwanted guest at a party. You know, the one that’s someone’s brother or something, and who keeps blurting out slightly offensive non-sequiters and derailing conversations? That one. Ann, we all get a little excited here from time to time, and my only setting is “snark.”

I’m an engineer, and I’m not sure we should be manipulating nature the way we do. I generally agree with FoodBabe, but I think she has started selling out. She had an affiliate link to a company that sold products with the very chemicals she is bashing! Additionally, we shouldn’t be eating fast food or packaged food, regardless of chemicals. These foods just aren’t nutritious. Instead, we should eat whole fresh food. I mean, since Subway took the ‘yoga mat’ chemical out of the bread, I’m sure she isn’t lining up to eat a fast food sandwich anyway! I also don’t see her drinking cheap beer. She is actually encouraging crappy eating habits!

Here she establishes she does not live in the tropics, and does buy packaged crap: “I do have two exceptions to this though: I take Vitamin D in the winter, but I try to get it by sun in the warmer months. I also occasionally drink ‘green drinks’, which are powdered drinks that you can find in health food store that include prebiotics, probiotics, and algae, such as chlorella and spirulina.”

“Buy local and buy often: Once produce is harvested, it loses nutrients as time goes on.”

So how is that accomplished during the winter? In my garden the apples, persimmons, pears, grapes and apricots ripened a long time ago. Did I do a bad thing by drying much of it? Or how about the large amount of applesauce in my deep freeze? The pepper and tomato plants have long since wilted. Was I not supposed to roast the peppers and put them in the freezer, or make a tomato sauce with my garden basil and oregano and put that in the freezer?

By the way, all of the foods that I grow in my garden have been manipulated by humans over the tens of thousands of years. None of them can grow very well in “nature.” Especially the seedless grapes and persimmons.

As you can tell, I am not very fond of food faddist who insist we eat “whole fresh foods” when they have no idea how it is hybridized, grown, harvested and preserved.

My wife’s parents are vegans & not paragons of health – primarily because they believe, since they are eating healthier, that portion size doesn’t matter………eating several pounds of “healthy” food, isn’t healthy.

Never mind “not sure,” I am sure we should not be manipulating nature in the way we do: heating the atmosphere, melting the arctic ice, and acidifying the oceans are really bad ideas.

But I can’t see how you get from “not all manipulations are good” to “this specific manipulation is bad,” while using the Internet, almost certainly sitting in an artificial dwelling (rather than outdoors or in a natural cave), traveling on paved roads, and so on. Humans have been manipulating food plants and animals for thousands of years; I for one am not going to start eating teosinte instead of corn, and I like modern cucumbers.